autumnsonata

In a kind of fitting poetry, Ingrid Bergman ended her legendary movie career where it began, in
Swedish cinema. For her final feature film, she paired for the first and only time with acclaimed
Swedish Ingmar Bergman to make the emotional drama, “Autumn Sonata.” It is quite interesting to
watch and hear Ingrid Bergman act in her native Swedish. There is a natural quality in her
performance. Gone is the theatricality of her American work, more indicative of American style of
the 1940s and 1950s. She has matured not only as a performer, but as a person, yet remains
captivating on screen.

Coupled with that is Ingmar Bergman’s singular vision and the sensibilities of European cinema.
Never has the European film industry had an obsession with spectacle and flash. Instead, these
filmmakers have always focused on raw human emotions and domestic conflict in often
unconventional and surreal, but always subtle, ways.

Ingrid Bergman plays a woman who has been an estranged mother separated from her two
daughters for many years, obsessed more with her piano playing than being a good maternal
figure. When her oldest daughter, Eva, invites her to come visit with she and her husband, Mama
reluctantly agrees. She is faced with a series of conflicts, including the presence of her youngest
daughter, Helena, the victim of a debilitating neural disease that has left her both physically and
mentally compromised. At the same time, Eva is carrying a lifetime of emotional baggage and she
and Mama find themselves verbally dueling it out over one emotionally wrought evening.

“Autumn Sonata” is a film that targets faces, with director Bergman intent on showing the emotional
development and torment of a daughter bent on telling her mother the truth about their
relationship. Dialogue heavy and highly intellectual, both emotionally and structurally, this movie is
compelling and rich but not for the casual viewer or the cinematically challenged. In other words,
prepare to pay attention and read a few subtitles along the way. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Rarely have I seen a film where the director watches the faces of the actors so intimately and
confidently. For minutes at a time, we are allowed to watch unabated as Eva regards her mother
while she plays the piano and vice versa. We never see the player, we see those affected. When
the evening crumbles into a late night of heart-wrenching revelations as Eva gives her mother the
psychological tongue lashing of a lifetime in an illegally good performance by both actresses, I was
left awestruck by the emotional desperation coming from the daughter and the hopelessness you
can see enveloping Bergman.

With extremely philosophical and often almost cosmic dialogue, this is a conversation that would never take place in such an intellectual way, but after seeing it, I
wish it would under such circumstances in real life. Director Bergman shows quite vividly the horrible legacy a parent can wreak on a child and the strength it
takes to confront such negative feelings and find the will to forgive.

European films differ from American films in many fundamental ways. Where American movies browbeat the message into the viewer without any subtlety,
European films opt to either remain almost invisibly subtle or be just as pointed but with an intellectual thrust that is almost pretentious. “Autumn Sonata” is the
latter, ending in a very stylized yet disturbingly realistic manner. Very different, very unique and very meaningful.